Special Feature - Hasbro

A big year for Hasbro

With Hasbro facing an exciting year of anniversaries, content releases and major new toy launches, Toy World caught up with Tim Kilpin, president of Toys, Licensing & Entertainment, to find out how the company is putting its franchise-first approach into action by bringing its hero brands to life in innovative new ways.

How is 2024 shaping up for Hasbro so far?

This is a big year for us and very much one of celebration: we’re celebrating Peppa Pig’s 20th anniversary, Transformers’ 40th, Dungeons & Dragons’ 50th and Clue’s [Cluedo’s] 75th. These multi-generational franchises continue to hold huge resonance beyond toys, even today, meeting the needs of fans all over the world.

Key to maintaining that resonance is always seeking new ways to bring our franchises to life either via content or product. There’s a lot going on this year for Peppa Pig in this respect, including birthday parties at global trade shows and a 3-part wedding special, part of Nickelodeon’s Peppa Pig Wedding Week, which starred Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom and aired back in March.

Transformers, meanwhile, is being supported by the new Transformers One feature film, which debuts at cinemas this September. Transformers One is the first time we’ve ever told the origin story of Transformers. We’re placing huge support behind Dungeons & Dragons too, in the form of new content for hardcore players, as well as development within the licensing programme, for fans who want to show their love for D&D via consumer products.

All in all, we’re leaning into the celebratory nature of 2024 by finding fresh ways to make even bigger franchise statements.

Have the over-stock issues which impacted Hasbro in the first half of 2023 been better this year?

Broadly speaking, I’d say we’re in a better position than a year ago. Back then, we saw retailers behaving cautiously because they had that inventory, because of economic uncertainty and because of the post-Covid realignment everyone was experiencing.

What’s pleasing to see is that towards the end of 2023, we started to gain a sense that consumers were really beginning to engage again at retail. Of course, you have to give them a reason to engage. Exciting new toys are a fundamental part of this picture – April saw the launch of Peppa Pig Peppa’s Muddy Puddles Party and the Play-Doh Pizza Delivery Scooter Playset – but we’ve also got plenty happening beyond toys. This year more than any other, we’re setting out to tell the stories behind our brands and bring consumers new merchandise that expands each individual franchise ecosystem.

This is one of Hasbro’s biggest competitive advantages: the breadth, depth, reach and resonance of our brands are unrivalled - and there’s growing demand for products that celebrate them in unique ways.

What do you see as the internal biggest challenges that need addressing in the short term?

For me, one of the biggest areas of importance is continuing to develop Hasbro’s franchise-first mentality and embedding it within our teams, and I think you can definitely see this paying off.

We’ve also done a lot to accelerate both the way we gather insights and the way we use them: we talk to parents, kids and adult fans of our brands about how they want to engage with them. Something like Transformers, for example, is truly multi-generational. We sit down with the people who grew up with Transformers, who loved the brand as kids and still love it as adults. The information we glean from our fans is, in turn, driving forward our product innovation. Coming into 2025, you’ll start seeing some real surprises that reflect the product development we’re bringing to bear on our toy ranges. I feel really good about what we’re launching this year, of course, but I feel even better about what’s in the pipeline for next year.

The other thing I was keen to address, and that we’re definitely getting better at, is how we tell the stories behind our brands, both at retail and via our marketing. The best example I can offer is the relaunch of Furby, which has been an incredible success. It’s a 25-year-old brand, so we completely redesigned and reimagined Furby using data from our insights. Underpinning all our work was the knowledge that kids wanted a friend in whose company they could let out their inner weirdo. Granted, this sounds a little odd, but it was a very powerful piece of understanding to be armed with when we set out to relaunch this brand. Our team duly researched which kinds of features and interactivity would allow that ‘inner weirdo’ play to take place, and I’m sure everyone has seen the amazing toy we’ve created. But when it came to marketing Furby we didn’t just do the basics: we rolled out a multifaceted campaign spanning everything from consumer retail events to TikTok influencers and digital coverage, which generated a huge amount of engagement.

Given the current toy landscape, what do you think Hasbro can do this year to stand out?

When you find something multigenerational, that kids and adults alike love, such as Peppa or Transformers, its essential you keep introducing new and engaging ways to play and show your love of the brand. Our job in 2024, considering where the industry has been the past few years, is to market our franchises: to tell our story and give families a reason to buy into merchandising programmes based on the brands they love.

In 2024, there’s not a lot of new entertainment content out there, but we’ve got the feature-length Transformers One movie. Viewers will never have seen the Autobots and Decepticons like they will in this film, and the digital animation is just fantastic. I’m confident that we’ve done our job on producing the movie, so now we have to make sure we market it to fans, meeting them wherever they are, and begin to really ramp up the excitement for it.

We’ve gone through a few challenging post-Covid years, but the business is now coming back around. I find myself reminding everyone that play isn’t going away.

Having been through that a tricky period, do you think Hasbro has got the right products and people to turn the ship around?

When we focus on the right things and get those things right - when we can marry a great brand holding lots of promise with the connectivity families and kids are seeking, and when we can bring that to life with compelling products and a unique style of storytelling - we’re going to win. This year, I feel we’re in a much better position with the brands we have, and the portfolio we have, to be able to do all that.

The retail partnerships we have here in the US with Target, Walmart and Amazon are playing a big role in our success, as are those with Smyths, The Entertainer and Tesco in the UK. Those retailers see what we see, and they’re as excited to get behind this year’s big events and tentpole moments as we are.

Comebacks never happen with the snap of a finger, but we’re at a point where everyone understands and appreciates the power of our portfolio and the myriad ways we can turn the dials on it to produce something truly special.

What new launches are you most excited about for autumn/winter?

I mentioned the Play-Doh Pizza Delivery Scooter earlier (it really is great), but we’re also looking at targeting slightly older audiences with Play-Doh by partnering with a key licensor on an awesome new range we’ll be revealing later in the year. One of the key insights we have on Play-Doh is that fans aren’t moving away from the brand as early as we thought they were: we just weren’t giving older kids age-appropriate sets to enjoy. The research we’ve done made it obvious that strategically ageing up the brand was a no-brainer, and in testing, we can see it’s going to pay off.

On Peppa Pig, we always talk about who she is and what she stands for, and, of course, jumping in muddy puddles is key to her personality. However, we’d never done a toy that actually jumps in muddy puddles. We’ve fixed that this year with Peppa Pig Peppa’s Muddy Puddles Party.

We’ve also been working with closely with Disney and Marvel on Spidey and his Amazing Friends, which is performing phenomenally well across the board. The animated show is yet another expression of this iconic character, suitable for younger kids, and so far, our licensing programme has focused on traditional toys and play patterns: plush, vehicles and so on. But we’re committed to finding new ways to bring brands to life. It’s not rocket science - it just requires drilling down into all the different facets of a brand and tying it all together.

There’s so much I wish I could tell you about 2025, and I’m very excited for everyone to see what happens when Hasbro really starts to activate its franchises. Transformers is going to be the perfect example of our strategy. We had a great 2023 with Transformers – the success of Rise of the Beasts gave us a lot of momentum - but with the 40th anniversary this year, and the ability to tell a whole new story about the origin of the franchise, we’ve got an incredible opportunity to bring Transformers to life in even more new ways: apparel, toys, publishing and comic books. We’re expanding our LBE programme globally, as we have done already on Peppa Pig, and when consumers start seeing all of it come together, they’ll begin to understand the kind of company Hasbro is and the scope it possesses. We’ve got the portfolio, as well as the ideas and talent, to bring this vision to life.